(no subject)

I was in a bus crash! Wheeee!

I escaped without injury - I didn't even have a bruise to show the paramedics. I suppose any bumps or strains will show themselves tomorrow morning.

We'd just left Chatswood when we hit another vehicle, left the road, and annihilated a brick wall - a second wall inside the first brought us to a stop. Luckily no-one was seriously injured, although the driver was pinned inside - they were still cutting him out when I left, to be given a lift home by the friend of one of the other passengers. (A bystander said the accident was caused by a couple of idiots drag racing. I was reading and didn't see what happened.)

My degree of sang froid throughout has been disturbing. From the moment it all began I entered a state of strange understanding, calm, and clarity. This probably has a lot to do with my antidepressant.

Full marks to the police and paramedics for their calm, friendly, professional behaviour.

ETA: Here we are in the SMH: Bus crashes into Sydney unit block.

Bus crash

Check out the photo in the SMH: Sydney bus driver freed after crash

The driver has serious leg injuries, and one of my fellow passengers turned out to have a "serious rib injury". The paramedics were very careful about checking us for injuries we didn't realise we had - one explained you can fail to notice them until the adrenaline wears off. I was sent home with strict instructions to call an ambulance if I noticed anything, but this morning I continue to be unscathed both physically and emotionally. It's so odd - at no time was I afraid. That has to be the drugs.

ETA: A bit more info and another snap at news.com.au.

:-x

So many people have sent me good wishes about the crash!

Thank you all.

It's good to still be here.

Bad 5p3lling zomg

The members of tennant_love have voted to ban "bad spelling" from their community, by which they mean not bad spelling, but "deliberate txtspeak, etc".

I don't get to decide what goes and what doesn't in the comm, but I am disappointed to see the intentional use of wordplay being called "bad spelling". It simply isn't. On LJ, 1337speak, txtspeak, fake chatspeak, etc, are used as fannish jargon and for amusement - not because the users can't spell, or lack English skills.

A teacher commented that she's seen students using netspeak in school assignments, which is obviously inappropriate - but in casual online chit chat between young women? There's a hierarchy of snobbery when it comes to non-standard English; there seems to be no problem about saying "squee" in the comm, for example, but elsewhere online this would be seen as embarrassingly childish.

I wonder if there's a cultural difference operating here. The British - and therefore Australians - have a long tradition of wordplay and nonsense. There's Lear, Lennon, Milligan, Franglais. Clive James quotes Molesworth in his TV reviews. I don't think there's quite the same thread of linguistic whimsy running through American culture - although any nation than can produce the magnificent word "absquatulate" cannot be totally po-faced. OTOH, I've seen the same snobbery from Brits, so it's not as simple as that.

Obviously this sort of playful posting annoys many people. Personally, I'm more worried that about a billion people online can't spell "hypocrite" or "blatant", words they may actually have to use in a serious environment.

Torchwood and Rape

What is rape? If someone has sex with another person without their consent, that's rape, or sexual assault. It doesn't matter if the people involved are married, have had sex before, are on a date, or have been drinking or using drugs. It doesn't matter how much violence was used, whether the rapist's motive was to get laid or to hurt or dominate someone, whether the victim was injured, whether either party is male or female, and it doesn't matter whether either of them thought of it as "rape". The only thing that matters is consent.

Someone who cannot say "no" - for example, because they're drunk, drugged, or knocked out - cannot say "yes"; which means that having sex with them is also rape or sexual assault. This is not just my opinion; it's written into the law in the US, the UK, and in Australia.

( SPOILERS for the first 3 Torchwood episodes )

nano

3581 words

MY EYES ARE MELTING